Just a few one liner thoughts to startup the thread and discussion:
1.) If online play is any indicator, the numbers are probably accurate - distinct lack of terrible players (like truly awful can’t combo with hulk level) that usually accompany a new release.
2.) Absolutely kills any hope for future DLC characters (unless they were mostly/in the works already).
3.) UMvC3 came out at a really bad game release time - probably would have done better if not against MW3/Skyrim/etc.
And just a longer thought here, but I think there might be more to UMvC3’s poor sales than just really bad release timing, my hypothesis:
In an era where online play is standard, it’s much harder for people to enjoy games of MvC3’s style. Unlike SSF4 in where new players can feel somewhat useful throwing out random Ken shoryu’s, it’s harder to truly derp your way through MvC3 as a super casual player (yes, even Wesker ABCS/BBCS is way way beyond your super casual player). The end result is that casual players tried MvC3 and quickly fled from it - something they didn’t do with SSF4.
Take it how you will, but given how SSF4 had 4.5-5x the initial sales (if not more) than UMvC3, there seems to be something about the MvC3 series that scared off the majority of its potential casual buyers - and no, it wasn’t the lack of Megaman. Thoughts?
They should have waited and released it closer to Christmas (like in mid December) it would have most likely done better. Also as much as I hate to say it the lack of Megaman (which come on we all know they are holding back for DLC or were if sales prohibit DLC characters) hurt the sales a bit.
I mentioned it in the general discussion thread awhile back, but there were also major retailers that flat out didn’t carry UMvC3 at all. Not sure on the reasoning, but Target simply didn’t carry the game at all in its retail stores - perhaps because of its 39.99 price tag?
I suppose it’s also possible that Target runs focus groups to decide what to stock on it shelves, and somehow found out early that UMvC3 would have low demand and thus not worth the orders/shelf space. Who knows?
Damn. I hope this turns around for the Holidays! I don’t want Capcom to forget about us because of sales. =\
Come to think of it, heroes and herald was supposedly going to appear as DLC within a week of the game’s release. Maybe this is the reason that hasn’t come to pass.
Most of the people who were scared off of Marvel 3 were scared off by the bullshit. Things like Dark Phoenix, Lv. 3 X-Factor, TACs, invincible assists, unblockable situations, extremely quick and ambiguous cross-ups, etc. About the only thing that really got ‘fixed’ was Dark Phoenix, who wasn’t so much fixed as made too high a risk to even be worth it.
Meanwhile, dominating vanilla characters such as Spencer, Doom, Zero and (arguably) Wesker have been buffed, while underperforming vanilla characters like Jill, Morrigan, Hsien-Ko and Tron have either been nerfed or simply not buffed nearly enough. Quite simply, anybody who was waiting to see if Ultimate would be a more balanced game have obviously seen that Capcom’s hap-hazard ways did nothing to ensure such a thing.
As for the people who don’t take these games seriously, they complained about the lack of modes. Non-competitive players want story modes (a la Mortal Kombat, BlazBlue), special event modes (a la KOFXI, GGXX) typical fighting game extras like survival modes and time trials, and even random stuff like mini-games (TvC) and color edit modes (CvS2). Ultimate Marvel 3, currently, has none of that. If it had launched with Heroes & Heralds, I think it could have done A LOT better.
And yeah, launching in the middle of the holidays is f’ing suicide. It always is unless you are one of the big dogs. They should have taken a page from Bayonetta’s book and launched AFTER the holidays, when everyone has tons of gift cards (or crap to return) to various retailers and they need to spend it on something.
I really don’t understand how the higher-ups at Capcom, who should know how to run a business, could possibly think the UMVC3 release was a good idea. As others have said, not only was it a terrible time of year to release it, but it was unacceptably soon after MVC3 in the eyes of casual players (and in the eyes of many hardcore players as well). Sure, competitive players are pretty much guaranteed to pick it up, but there’s pretty much no reason at all to buy the game for a non-competitive player.
Some higher up business executive at Capcom probably figured that even if releasing during this time was a bad idea for sales, that UMvC3 could still garner 50% of MvC3’s sales and thus be a decent boost to Capcom in Q4. I don’t really know, but a poorly thought out release time like the one UMvC3 got usually comes when the people higher up are throwing figurative hail mary passes to try to save their own asses.
Wonder if that means UMvC3 will end up demanding as high a price as the PS2 version of MvC2 did back before the re-release on PSN/XBLA. Low sales likely means a low print run, plus if demand ever does pick up, Capcom will be incapable of making new copies.
Maybe it’s because the great and bad ass players from vanilla due to reset of ranking are now pretending to be beginners and trolling beginners lobbys and raping the casual players and actual beginners while also messaging scrubness, So how can these players actually enjoy the game that and also capcom screwing the vanilla players by not making this DLC like SSF4 AE, and what ever happen to spectator mode not being possible on vanilla all of a sudden it’s in ultimate bunch of lies. Or maybe it is because Super Ultra Maximus Marvel vs Capcom 3.5 Vibrator Edition is just around the corner.
But how can you prove this though? Not saying that the possibility to have lost buyers isn’t there, but the assumption that they’re significant enough to hurt the sales is something else. From what I understood it’s not like Megaman games were doing so hot before Capcom decided to box the franchise anyway, and you can’t vouch that every one of those buyers would have gotten UMVC3.
It certainly didn’t help that people are not fond of Capcom’s practice to release an updated version of the same game and charge full retail - some people are waiting for them to make the next version of MvC3 and avoiding Ultimate. If this really were the last time, customers might have accepted it had it come after the Winter rush. Perhaps releasing more copies in February would help the situation?
Oh, and a trade-in deal with publishers for anyone who traded in an MvC3 disc to cut the price down to, say, 19.99, would be great to win people over. Let Capcom pay the difference, even if Ultimate sold great they already got their earnings with the original.
I freely admit I can’t really prove that it hurt sales but knowing how many people have said they wouldn’t buy it because of it not having Megaman it certainly could have. Though the much bigger problem was it being so soon after MVC3 came out.
Pretty much this. I don’t think that casual payers actually understand the balance in this game, so even if they were told that one character got buffed or nerfed that means little to them as they are below the level where the balance changes count. The real problem was lack of new stuff. Like 'em or not, but every character in SSFIV got a new Ultra and casual players like flashy Ultras, even if majority of them (Ultras) suck. Not even half the characters in UMvC3 got new moves so casual players think the characters are the same. How many casuals actually noticed that, say, Thor’s command grab has more range? If it doesn’t look new, it is the old stuff to them.
Exactly, they would also add a bunch of content that they planned to. With bigger roster and mode selection (seriously, no new modes in UMvC3, what casual player would bother, and no, free DLC mode that comes out a month after release isn’t going to cut it) it would perform better.
One note of irony here is that the poor sales almost assuredly ensure that there will never be a PC version. Yet, games have made huge profits and comebacks using Steam (on PC, duh) and selling at reduced prices.
IE:
UMvC3 goes up on Steam. Probably gets at least 10-15k just because its advertised on Steam (if not more, but that small amount is still half the amount sold now).
UMvC3 later gets regularly advertised on big Steam sales for the next year - resulting in a shitload of people buying it when it hits the “why not” price of 9.99 with a 75% off notice.
On a note completely unrelated to the above, I wonder if the poor sales means that they’ll eventually offer a “UMvC3 DLC upgrade” for vanilla MvC3 at a cost of 10-20 bucks. With the general idea being that because vanilla MvC3 had such a larger user base, they might be able to get a large amount of money from those who didn’t buy the UMvC3 disk but still might have curiosity.